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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Tavern Game: Rot Grub Roulette

Within the lower quarters of Blackspire it is not uncommon to find patrons of the local taverns engaged in one of the more strange of games, and one of the most dangerous; rot grub roulette. Two players sit opposite one another, blindfolded, their left forearms exposed, with their right arm tied to the chair behind their backs. The mediator takes 6 small wooden cylindrical containers and shuffles them back and forth on the table. Within 5 of the small wooden containers are pairs of harmless maggots. One of them, however, contains a pair of burrowing rot grubs.

Each round the two men place bets and the mediator dumps the contents of one container onto one player's forearm. The player, not knowing if he has been exposed to the rot grub or not, must wait 5 full minutes with onlookers jeering and howling along. This process is repeated between the players with the stakes getting higher each round as one more wooden container with harmless maggots is taken away making the probability of being exposed to a grub even higher.

No onlooker may attempt to prevent a rot grub from burrowing if exposed, nor douse the player's arm with fire. If a player manages to free his right arm and do this himself, he is immediately taken outside, beaten and cast aside as a useless craven (if the beating he suffers does not kill him.) Indeed it is often said that it is better to die from the rot grub than to feel the merciless beating of an angry drunk Blackspire mob.

The game ends when one man decides to quit, losing all his earnings, or one man dies.